Posts Tagged ‘House of Commons’

Yesterday I made some attempts to talk about the parliamentary reform the Liberal Democrats would like to make, and how this reform might look like. Today I’d like to suggest how a new House of Lords might look like, fully elected by the public.

The first part is this house would do exactly what it says on the tin; the public would vote for the party they want in the house, rather than a candidate. When all the votes are counted, seats would then be allocated based on the percentage of votes; for is Labour fielded 30% of the votes, they would gain 30% of the seats; if the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition gained 4% of the votes they would get 4% of the seats, and so on. At this point I would probably rename the house to something more accurate, like the House of Senators… although if for historical reasons the public wanted to keep it as the House of Lords, then that is fine with me. As long as it has no affect on democracy in this country then I am not too fussed.

As an extension, what I find interesting with an elected upper house like this is that there would not necessarily be a need for political parties in the lower house anymore. Political parties could be banned from the lower house, or allowed providing they do not overstep the power of their constituents to have a say on laws, or agree or disagree with them.

It would also provide a separation of powers, with the House of Lords acting as the executive and the House of Commons acting as the legislature. Although just because the executive would be based in the Lords, it would not mean that the Lords should be given anymore power. It should be left as it is, with most of the power lying in the Commons. It would then be the duty of political parties, not only to appeal to the United Kingdom as a whole, but to appeal to the representatives of the constituencies of the United Kingdom who will make laws on a daily basis.